Went to the Wizards' home opener last night, and I have to say that the $50 million in taxpayer money did, in fact, buy some very nice scoreboards for the arena. On the other hand, it appeared that nobody actually knew how to operate them properly and the information was consistently out of date. Along the same lines, the Wizards seem to have completely forgotten how to play basketball. Or, more specifically, Gilbert Arenas seems to have forgotten how to play, since giving up 94 points is usually consistent with a Wizards win and Brendan Haywood stepped up with 10 points 16 rebounds 5 blocks and a solid shooting percentage. But Gilbert: ten points! Six turnovers! I'm beginning to worry that this may be a very long season....
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Home Opener
04 Nov 2007 09:18 am
Comments (23)
First real test for the Nuggets tonight against the Hornets.
Nene and K-Mart both look awful at this point of their recoveries. Denver needs at least one of them to pick it up in the next several weeks.
Matt,
It's not too late to jump on the Powder Blue Bandwagon - Go Nuggets!
And yeah, I did notice Brendan's line, tho I didn't see the game.
"It's not too late to jump on the Powder Blue Bandwagon - Go Nuggets!"
I want to see a Nuggets-Celtics Finals so bad I can taste it.
I want to see a Nuggets-Celtics Finals so bad I can taste it.
No chance. You still have defensive problems, PG problems, and, sometime this season, you may have a "too much talent" problem.
If Arenas' knee is jacked up, it could indeed be a long one.
But that's not a good reason to switch loyalties. And even if it were, under no circumstances should a grown man cheer for a team which requires the frequent public use of the word "Powder"
Did I miss any preseason predictions? Here are mine: Spurs over the Mavs in the West, Celtics over the Pistons in the East, and the Spurs take it all.
I'll take a too much talent problem.
My concern with the Nuggets since the trade has been the same. I don't know if you can succeed with two guys who are such volume scorers as Anthony and AI. They both need to get a lot of shots to be effective.
But Gilbert: ten points! Six turnovers! I'm beginning to worry that this may be a very long season....
Matt, it's not too late to get on the Big Green bandwagon as we head to number #17. Oh right, you hate everything to do with where you went to school. Heh. But seriously, though, it would sound plausible in DC cocktail receptions: "Yeah, it was pretty impossible not to become a Celtics fan spending four cold winters in Cambridge." I mean, you do bring up Harvard pretty frequently anyway, don't you? Now you could kill two birds with one stone. Heh.
What it the deal on Gilbert, by the way. Anybody know? I mean the real deal. I'm too lazy to do research right now. But I watched Boston's opener against the Wizards the other night, and I was thoroughly unimpressed. I've got nothing against "shoot-first" point guards as players -- I figure they're playing that position because the team doesn't have a better floor general. But my sense was he's not a particularly brilliant passer, and he doesn't take good care of the ball, and he's an Iverson-like machine on offense (ie., takes lots of shots to put up his numbers). In other words, just the kind of overrated player the Wages of Wins folks aren't so crazy about.
"No chance. You still have defensive problems"
Good interior defense. Camby is Camby. Nene gave Duncan some fits last year, tho he ended up in foul trouble - hopefully K-Mart coming off the bench will ameliorate that problem.
Melo can actually play nice defense when he wants to. Denver-Cleveland games are always fun because Melo takes guarding LBJ seriously.
The only real personnel problem is guarding tall 2 guards on the perimeter. With a little luck, Kleiza and Diawarra can handle that. With considerably more luck, J.R. Smith will suddenly figure out how to play defense.
"PG problems"
Between Wilks, Atkins, Carter, and Jones, I think the situation there will stabilize given time.
"you may have a "too much talent" problem."
Yup. But that's better than the alternative.
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I'm not saying they should be favored to win the West, but assuming they get lucky on the injury front, they've got a serious chance.
"What it the deal on Gilbert, by the way. Anybody know? I mean the real deal."
Rumor has it that Gilbert has been spending more than 20 hours a day blogging and playing video games. The lack of sleep, food, and practice has impeded his recovery.
Ah, I forgot one other major problem: George Karl is coach. When--on a team with JR Smith, Iverson, and Martin, mind you--the coach is the most combustible and insane person associated with the team, that's a problem.
"Ah, I forgot one other major problem: George Karl is coach."
Karl does scare me.
Gilbert Arenas seems to have forgotten how to play
Is there an NBA Live cover curse? Probably not, but Gilbert doesn't want to set a precedent here.
After breaking a record for team ineptitude in 3pt shooting in Boston, Gilbert is only shooting 33.3% from the floor.
Maybe he's spending too much time in the limelight and not enough in the gym. If so, he'll figure it out and go back to full time gym rat. He has a ton of pride.
But even if that Boston game was an outlier, the East looks tougher this year. What did the Wizards do to get better?
Too early to worry though - last year was also a slow start.
Much more interested in the Lakers cutting through Phoenix with a mediocre scoring effort from Kobe.
What did the Wizards do to get better?
I guess it is possible that Nick Young will be an improvement over Jarvis Hayes. But that's weak. And the loss of Etan Thomas hurts their depth, although on the Adam Morrison theory (i.e., that the injury wilrevent the team from playing a bad player, thereby giving more time to better players), maybe that will actually help.
But the Hawks and Magic probably both surpassed the Wizards in that division.
What did the Wizards do to get better?
Songaila was a good pickup. Blatche may be ready to contribute, and should get more playing time in Etan's absence. And the most important thing: the Wizards were leading the East for a while last season, before their three most important players got injured, so they already have the talent level to be contenders again this year.
None of which will matter if they, especially Gilbert, don't start remembering very soon how to play basketball. That second quarter vs. the Celtics was horrifying.
Petey,
Agreed that Nene and K-Mart look pretty rotten right now - on Wednesday night they both looked like raw rooks. But I think it's safe to assume that they'll get their legs back underneath them, and with either one guarding the other team's big and Camby with the weakside help, the interior D will be solid.
I'm not overly concerned about point guard play - Iverson and Melo run a good 2-man game and seem to be able to make the right plays most of the time.
If Kleiza can keep making 3's at this clip, look out - Melo is going to average 30 if anyone can stretch defenses.
I still don't like the perimeter D. That and the everpresent possibility of Karl have an utter breakdown with either Smith or Martin are the things keeping me up at night.
Those work out, though, and I could see us eking out more wins than the Spurs, who usually don't start trying too hard before March. No way we win more than Phoenix, but 2nd or 3rd in the West is definitely possible.
I'm a born and bred Philly boy who's always loved the Sixers, (tho a temporary Powder Blues fan during the AI hejira), but it just occurred to me that I'm going to rooting for the Celtics over the Sixers this season.
I believe this is a sign of the impending apocalypse.
Wilt Chamberlain and Darryl Dawkins, and Julius Erving and Andrew Toney are rolling over in their graves.
Tommy Heinsohn will torment my nightmares from now on.
Ugh...Petey, you're only allowed to root for the Celtics against the Lakers. Even then, you root for the Lakers to lose, not for the Celtics to win.
I've decided to root for the Warriors. They're just a Philadelphia team playing their home games somewhere else for a bit.
The scoreboard looks fantastic, almost too good (I kind of wanted to watch it rather then the game in front of me) but you're right, whats the point if they cant work it? The players and the points were at no point correct, both on the big board and the smaller boards in the corners of the arena. Whats the point of looking nice if you can't accurately represent who's on the floor?
As for how the team actually looked....I'm scared.
I did get to see one Nuggets game this week, and I actually like their team more than the rest of this will seem to indicate (and did list them third in my pre-season pick of the WC, which is still the only conference that matters ...)
That being said, the Nuggets do have decent interior defense. The problem is that it doesn't matter because they are never allowed to defend their guys because they are so busy rotating to defend whatever perimeter player has broken down the perimeter defense. Camby is no better than an average defender straight up in the post, but he is good off the ball at changing shots, but because he is busy doing that, his guy is getting the offensive board and dunking on them.
Some teams design defense that is susceptible to good ball movement, and some that is susceptible to good penetration, but the Nuggets defense is broken down routinely by either, which is officially not good.
I have been surprised by how bad the Suns have looked. (Granted, it is less than a week, and the Mavs lost their first four games last year and still had a pretty good regular season ...)
powder is a blessed word, not a problematic one, if you live in denver/the west (i forget that people back east don't get to ski powder).
as for denver having a chance to win the west, non-rhetorical question: anyone have an example of a team that has never gotten out of the first round going to the finals the next year in a good conference? the latter caveat may be necessary to account for cavs last year, but i can't recall a team going from zero to hero in one year in a good conference. t-wolves almost, maybe orlando back in the day?
Orlando Magic while Jordan was retired? Heat, Knicks, and Bulls were all pretty good. I don't remember if the Magic had made it out of the first round before they made the run to the finals. I know they were swept by the Pacers in their first trip to the playoffs, but I don't remember if there was another year before their run to the finals.
Adding a player the caliber of Iverson does make this a pretty unique experience, however.
Comments closed November 18, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
It's still early. The thing with the East though is that so many of the bottom teams got better, it'll be hard for a middling team like the Wiz to preserve their spot. And the Wiz really didn't improve at all, and lost a pretty important cog in William Butler Thomas.
Meanwhile, my team is also 0-3. Although we always start out slow.
Posted by Freddie | November 4, 2007 9:34 AM